FILE -- Flowers on the Google logo, the day after the company announced possible plans to exit the Chinese market, outside the company's offices in Beijing, Jan. 13, 2010. Google withdrew from China in 2010 to protest the country’s censorship. Now the internet giant is working on a search engine that complies with Chinese censorship rules. (Gilles Sabrie/The New York Times) less

FILE -- Flowers on the Google logo, the day after the company announced possible plans to exit the Chinese market, outside the company's offices in Beijing, Jan. 13, 2010. Google withdrew from China in 2010 to ... more

Photo: GILLES SABRIE, NYT

Photo: GILLES SABRIE, NYT

Image
1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

FILE -- Flowers on the Google logo, the day after the company announced possible plans to exit the Chinese market, outside the company's offices in Beijing, Jan. 13, 2010. Google withdrew from China in 2010 to protest the country’s censorship. Now the internet giant is working on a search engine that complies with Chinese censorship rules. (Gilles Sabrie/The New York Times) less

FILE -- Flowers on the Google logo, the day after the company announced possible plans to exit the Chinese market, outside the company's offices in Beijing, Jan. 13, 2010. Google withdrew from China in 2010 to ... more

Hundreds of Google employees, upset at the company’s decision to secretly build a censored version of its search engine for China, have signed a letter demanding more transparency to understand the ethical consequences of their work.

In the letter, obtained by the New York Times, employees wrote that the project and Google’s apparent willingness to abide by China’s censorship requirements “raise urgent moral and ethical issues.” They added, “Currently we do not have the information required to make ethically-informed decisions about our work, our projects, and our employment.”

The letter is circulating on Google’s internal communication systems and is signed by about 1,000 employees, according to two people familiar with the document, who were not authorized to speak publicly.

The protest presents another obstacle for Google’s potential return to China eight years after the Mountain View company publicly withdrew from the country in protest of censorship and government hacking. China has the world’s largest internet audience, but has frustrated U.S. tech giants, including Facebook and Instagram, with content restrictions or outright blockages of services.

It is also the latest example of how Google’s outspoken workforce has agitated for changes to strategy. In April, employees spoke out against its involvement in a Pentagon program that uses artificial intelligence to improve weaponry. By June, Google had said it would not renew a contract with the Pentagon for AI work.

Google’s interest in bringing search back to China came to the forefront this month, when reports surfaced that the company was working on a search app that restricts content banned by Beijing. The project, known internally as Dragonfly, was developed largely in secret, prompting outrage among employees who worried they had been unwittingly working on technology that would help China withhold information from its citizens.

“We urgently need more transparency, a seat at the table, and a commitment to clear and open processes: Google employees need to know what we’re building,” the letter said.

The letter also called on Google to allow employees to participate in ethical reviews of the company’s products, to appoint external representatives to ensure transparency and to publish an ethical assessment of controversial projects. The document referred to the situation as a “code yellow,” a process used in engineering to address critical problems that impact several teams.

Google declined to comment on the letter. It has said in the past that it will not comment on Dragonfly or “speculation about future plans.”

Historically, Google has been more responsive to employee concerns and more transparent about future projects and inner workings than other major technology companies, inviting questions from workers at its staff meetings and encouraging internal debate.

The internal dissent over Dragonfly comes on the heels of the employee protests over Google’s involvement in the Pentagon project to use artificial intelligence. After Google said it would not renew its contract with the Pentagon, it unveiled a series of ethical principles governing its use of AI.

In those principles, Google publicly committed to only use AI in “socially beneficial” ways that would not cause harm and promised to develop its capabilities in accordance with human rights law. Some employees have raised concerns that helping China suppress the free flow of information would violate these new principles.

In 2010, Google said it had discovered that Chinese hackers had attacked the company’s corporate infrastructure in an attempt to access the Gmail accounts of human rights activists. The attack, combined with government censorship, propelled Google to pull its search engine from the country.

The exit from China was a seminal moment for the company — a symbol of its uncompromising idealism captured by Google’s unofficial motto of “Don’t Be Evil.” At the time, Chinese internet users marked the loss of Google’s search engine by laying flowers at the company’s Beijing offices in what became known as an “illegal flower tribute.” A possible re-entry to China, according to current and former employees, is a sign of a more mature and pragmatic company.

Google has maintained a significant presence in China even though its flagship services are not accessible in the country. Last year, Google announced plans for a research center in China focused on artificial intelligence. And it has introduced translation and file management apps for the Chinese market. Google now has more than 700 employees in China.

Google’s work on Dragonfly is not a guarantee that its search engine will be welcomed back to China. The government would have to approve its return and it has kept U.S. technology firms like Facebook at arm’s length, opting instead to work closely with homegrown internet behemoths.

Some employees are in favor of re-entering China, arguing that exiting the country in protest of censorship has done little to pressure Beijing to change its position while it has made Google nonessential among the world’s largest base of internet users.

When Google pulled out of China in 2010, Sergey Brin, the company’s co-founder, said it objected to the country’s “totalitarian” policies when it came to censorship, political speech and internet communications. If anything, China has only tightened its controls in the past eight years — leaving the company in a bind for how to justify its return.

“You can never satisfy a censor, particularly the ones in China,” said Charles Mok, a member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council who advocates for information technology and who is affiliated with the territory’s democratic camp.

Google is probably facing intense pressure to introduce more of its products in China, Mok said, but added that the company would lend legitimacy to government censorship if it debuted a censored search product in China.

“Then the Chinese government can say, ‘Google is OK with it too,’” he said.